Welcome to another recrap of 90 Day Fiancé, where we learn all the things money can buy, like denial, a resort vacation for one, unpaid slave labor, and nonrefundable mid-plague airfare.
COVID-19 has finally decided to stop inconveniencing Stephanie, so she’s back to enjoying her first high school relationship and pondering which hula hoop to pack. It might take an extra suitcase, since Steph’s been shopping for Ryan since before they met.
“I have too much money, and instead of giving to charities, I buy affection,” she explains. “Affection has been around WAY longer than Bitcoin, you know. This is a little watch for the big watches to wear. It cost $3500. And this is a tiny pair of pants for gnomes that’s been stitched by other gnomes that live inside of watches. They cost Blair dollars, and if you can’t figure out what that is, you can’t afford gnome pants.”
Stephanie’s also bringing her mother’s ring for the fabled proposal she’s orchestrated in advance, and based upon their last telephone doom spiral, she knows this is exactly as smart as cramming said treasure into a checked suitcase.
“Time out: Who the fuck is taking care of me, now that the food lady is gone?” The cat has questions. “I’m fucking old. There are medications in tiny bottles. What am I, the Uncle Joon of this narrative? Am I going to get my paw struck in a drain for six fucking hours while the woman in my life dates the wrong person? This is bullshit.”
Stephanie also suffers from an acute case of Zied Envy Disorder, and she’s so inflamed that she’s forced to wear a face mask with a photo of her posing with her favorite child. This doubles as a way to skip relationship and go right into Proud Grandparent mode.
“I’m listening to that YEET Skert song on The TikTok so Ryan and I have something to talk about,” Stephanie explains, googling “zoomers be like” for additional points of reference.
Stephanie lands, and Ryan is waiting for her with balloons and 90DF’s favorite spinning camera person. “I was young enough to still count years in halves when I met Stephanie,” Ryan happily declares, before planting scores of clucking chicken kisses on Thursday’s fiancé.
Newly reunited, Stephanie and Ryan drive a golf cart around Steph’s money and eventually stop at a great place to remind people how successful you are. Then Steph cracks open her suitcase to dramatically display everything Ryan will be selling six days after her departure.
“I would rather have the money than all these gifts,” Ryan reminds us of the foundation of their relationshit. “I think that maybe I might ‘lose’ some of these things soon, if you know what I mean.”
“Everyone says they don’t want underwear for Christmas, but mama knows how to panty up her man!” Steph is triumphant in her sea of boxers.
Then Steph trots out glow in the dark condoms for the four times a night they supposedly bang it out. “This is very smart, because when you get older, it’s harder to find a dick in the dark,” Ryan explains.
Now that the gifting and prophylactics are out of the way, the only thing left to do is go through his phone. This is really an IQ test, to see if he’s stupid enough to save messages from other ladies, when he knows his only source of income will be landing soon. Since Ryan has a whole different phone for all his extracurriculars, he offers to turn off the password protection, so she can reread all her texts that he didn’t respond to whenever she wants. Stephanie sees this as a major development.
“Before, Ryan was really reluctant to let me look at his phone,” she says. “Not sure why any of this is a priority when I suddenly have dick in my life again after a ten month penis drought, and all these condoms on hand to skirt diseases he might have accumulated. I’m not convinced he’s changed, but I’m going to just keep buying stuff until I’m sure.”
Later on they’re prepping for a dinner date, Ryan decked out in his best buff from Surviver he’s been ordered to wrap around his head for Steph’s ethnic experience. He says he likes Stephanie’s dress, and for some reason is helping her get into it instead of out of it. Once seated they agree to order margaritas and lobster, and that’s the extent of their conversation. Ryan tells Stephanie that he knows he needs to earn her trust back, and no matter what he’s going to get to the states. Stephanie says that this is the dude she fell in love with, and we get it. So she busts out the ring that he’s supposed to propose with.
“Did someone say ring?” Calm down, Natalie.
If you’re doubting Steph’s ability to cling on till the end of the season, fret not, because it’s time to reintroduce her second plot point, which is being a cousin fucker, which has consistently rated ‘ew’ in surveys every year since 1954.
“If I don’t do this, reporting on purchases will be my only contribution,”Steph explains. “The producers say hula hooping in magic glasses before injecting myself with youth serum is only funny once, maybe twice if Darcey wasn’t a regular fixture.”
Meanwhile, Mike and Natalie are glowing from the hate-sex they had the night before, and now they’re ready to talk about working on things, without actually working on them. So basically Natalie’s record skips endlessly while Mike’s eyebrow answers.
“Either I am married or I am right. I prefer to be married. And wrong,” Natalie clarifies things. “This insecurity will last full 90 days. Then will be replaced with baby breakdown, of course.”
Mike’s mom is coming, which means free therapy, but Natalie is uneasy, and doesn’t really want to welcome anyone while they’re fighting. But since they’re never not fighting, a peaceful visit would be harder to plan than a COVID flight to Belize.
Mom aka Trish arrrives from Oklahoma, and Mike says he only sees her once a year, when tornado season makes booking airfare unnecessary. Natalie immediately declares she likes mom’s style, because this line worked on Uncle Beau, and Rebecca taught her that in the south the best way to insult someone is with a compliment. Mom and Mike start trading inside jokes, and Natalie is immediately defensive.
“I don’t know what this laughter is, but yes, they are laughing at me,” Natalie says. “All these things reference ring. I do not have ring. It is precious to me. It calls to me, my precious. Have I mention this?”
Mike starts breaking down how to play dead in event of bear attack, so you can get used to the feeling, and while Mike is joking, that’s not going to stop Natalie from demonstrating what happens when you don’t drink caffeine, alcohol, or consume a steady supply of sugar.
“This is not true. I have 40 grams of sugar each year,” Natalie is ready. “Also, I don’t have ring.”
“See?” Mike says, cracking open his sixth beer, which he pours over bacon ice cream. “I’m perfectly calm. She’s having some kind of B12 crash or whatever. I’m leaving my eyebrow behind so she can keep going while I eat the fuck-shit out of this.”
Eager to plant mom in the middle, Natalie tells Trish she thinks Mike is enacting revenge by withholding her ring. 20 minutes later mom agrees and has nearly worked through the duct tape binding her to the chair.
“I’m not obsessive. I am totally able to let go,” Natalie explains, reaching for a drawer to upgrade the duct tape to something Gorilla.
Later on they go out to dinner, which Natalie kicks off by reminding us that silence isn’t awkward to her, because unless you’re talking about her ring she has nothing to say. “I also micromanage Mike’s eating habits,” she suddenly remembers. “I wish you would not eat butter. Air coated bread is much more healthier. Here, you can wave over butter for essence.”
“But butter’s very good for you,” mom keto’s.
“What?” The butter replies.
“Real butter is good for your mind,” mom sciences. “Because of the cow’s memories stored in the udders.”
“That is one interesting,” Natalie agrees. “Have I mention I do not have ring back?”
“I’m starting to sense you want the ring back,” Mom psychics.
Having had more than enough of this shit, mom tells Natalie that orchestrating a test where you return a ring to see if he’ll give it back again is weird, and doesn’t seem to have worked out the way she planned.
“It’s like we’re both hurt about the ring,” Mike Keanus. Natalie looks like she’s going to burst when Mike’s mom suggests setting a tentative date, then they can work towards it and focus on the relationship itself, and not whether the K-1 was a worthy investment.
“I feel like I found a magic button to Mike’s heart. Trish,” Natalie is ready. “You very smart woman. I will buy you car.”
“A card?”
“No. A car.”
“Yep, this is doomed,” mom speaks truth to the producer. “Seriously, how the fuck do these two not ever arrive at any possible solutions? They just repeat the problem over and over. What do they mean when they say ‘keep working on it,’ since they’re not actually working on anything? We’re going to need a COVID-like supply of TP for this shit show.”
The next day Mike is wearing pajama pants in the kitchen, and finally someone understands there’s no point in getting dressed if you’re not leaving. Instead, Mike rocks a pancake flip, and Natalie is understandably amazed, so Mike doesn’t mention that he bathed the pan in butter and poured a full pound bag of sugar into the mix for funzies.
Having agreed to set a date, they bust out a calendar to isolate a number that meets the demands of superstition. “I like number 3,” Natalie says, as they agree to April 3rd. “Because 4+3+2020=11, and 1+1 = 2, plus one ring = 3, and you know what three is? Prime.”
“Holy fucking shit. That’s three words, too.” Mike is into it.
They tell Trish they picked a date, and she’s mellow in her congratulations, because it’s hard to celebrate with two people when you had to stitch the seams of their relationship the night before. Plus, April 3rd is like 37 days before Mother’s Day, which is fucked up. Natalie is fine with a non-church wedding, which is good because Mike isn’t Libby.
“The military just declassified stuff about aliens, so I’m about to be right about a lot of things,” Mike eyebrows. “Also, I’m not doing anything with funny hats unless it happens on Mars.”
Natalie calls her mom to tell her the date, and mom’s happy, because she’s ready to trap Mike in a closet until Beau rides to the rescue if that’s what it takes for these two to marry. After she hangs up the phone Natalie starts crying because she misses her mom. Mike holds her as she cries, and Trish cries and empathizes with her situation, and says it must be very hard to give everything up to live such a different life.
“Thank you for Michael. He’s a really good man.” Natalie feels much more secure, and all of us at home hope they get their shit together since there is a genuine sweetness buried underneath the rubble of their relationship.
Yara is standing next to a wall of Beanie babies, which can only mean she’s purchasing a pregnancy test. She says that when she had her miscarriage, the doctor told her a successful pregnancy would be unlikely. She disappears, and the producers are so in suspense about the outcome that they hover outside the bathroom door, recording her hand washing.
“We could just make this show 90 minutes instead of two hours,” the producers say. “But fuck that. C.R.E.A.M, bitches.”
Yara calls her friend Lena, and holds a pregnancy test up to the phone camera, until Lena tells her to pull it back some since all she sees is a plastic blur. Yep: pregnant, or as they say it in Mexico, pregnant-o.
“That’s right,” Andrew agrees.
“Maybe the test is wrong,” Lena says. “In America they make half of all pregnancy tests positive in advance to confuse the abortion fairy.”
Yara tells Lena that Jovi is going to be back in a few days, and she’ll talk to him about it in person. That few days arrives in the next 30 minutes of show, with Yara taking her nauseated stomach to the airport to pick up Jovi. She mentions that Jovi didn’t believe she was pregnant the last time she had a miscarriage, since he’s a graduate of the Yeah, But Are You Sure It’s Mine? School of Massholes. Eventually he was convinced that biology is still a book he didn’t read, and then he drank enough to eat the book’s pages and forgot all about it.
Yara can’t find him at the airport, and when she calls he claims he’s doing a Darcey in the bathroom and will be out any minute. Turns out he was actually changing into an alcoholic, and greets her with what’s likely his third 9AM drink in hand. This accelerates Yara towards peak ball buster mode, or as she and Jovi call it, foreplay.
“Cut it out, mom,” Jovi whines, covering his drink with his hand. “It’s just soda. Ha, ha, this passes for adulthood to me!”
“Drop away,” Yara writes a soft rock ballad as she tells him to ditch the drink.“Drop away.” A light breeze blows through the airport, her hair drifting over her eyes, as the lighting darkens, a glass breaks, and Slash readies for his guitar solo.
“I’m growing more powerful,” the fetus declares, sucking his mother’s life force through his stomach straw. “Hmmm yummy. I think I’m going to make her crave donuts slathered in lard.”
“Donuts slathered in lard, you say?” Mike adds another item to his This Week’s Menu magnetic white board.
90DF: The World’s Toughest Prisons is ready to take us back to Julia, who has been held without bail for just 20 days. That’s right, kids: all these parent meetings, forced dinners, and impatience with failure to perform 5AM farm labor has happened in 20 days.
“See? This is why I drink at 9AM,” Jovi has answers.
“You know we don’t have cocktails until we’ve warmed the kitchen crickets in our mouths,” dad is appalled. “This is not a joke. This is my house. There are rules.”
“Don’t even live with you, dude,” Jovi loses track of his plastic balancing straw. “This is the last time I take pre-flight peyote.”
After another morning of farm work, Julia calls her dad. He asks why she hasn’t called, and Julia says she’s only allowed access to her phone when she has enough stars on the chore chart, and even then she has to know the secret password, which can only be found inside her bedroom’s mystery paint buckets.
“As the head of your future family...” Julia’s dad begins.
“Did someone say head?” Brandon unzips his pants and times out Pokémon Go.
“...he needs to resolve this.”
“Oh. Never mind,” Pokémon Go is a go.
Julia knows Brandon isn’t even the head of his own body, let alone their family, so she’s going to have to draw a line, and that line is that she’s not enduring marathon disappointed lectures and sneaking into his bedroom ever again.
“I hate. I hate this place,” Julia says, finding the most important words in the English language. “It’s dirty. I look like pig. I hate you now, Brandon.” Brandon wants to like, have a work day and talk about this later. Julia wants to hash it out between hobo spider sprays.
“I don’t see what’s wrong with taking care of a few cute animals,” Brandon manages to be dismissive and patronizing, while forgetting that Julia has already met the family’s body disposal pigs.
Later he comes home and Julia is prepared to read him, completely. “It’s not as hard as you’re making it out to be,” Brandon resumes readily dismisses her feelings. “Let me say cute animals again, and act like there’s not apparently too many of them for a family to manage without imported help.”
Brandon is a bit overwhelmed by Julia’s insistence that they move out, but he’s secretly over the nonstop farm demands too, and says he’ll tell his parents they’re leaving, because he doesn’t want to lose Julia.
Speaking of prison, newly freed Amira is finally headed back to France, while Andrew’s worst resort day ever sallies forth. Through all of this he still doesn’t seem to have noticed she’s recovering from a truly traumatic experience, and maybe he should take his ass to France to comfort her. Or, you know, call her.
Amira’s father has been worried sick, and when Amira finally lands, COVID be damned, dude is hugging his daughter.
“SIX FEET!” A stranger yells, walking by with their nose exposed.
Amira feels guilty because her father suffered because of her, which is the most sincerely sweet family moment on this show since Kyle and Noon’s season. She tells dad that they took her passport, phone, and watch, and basically locked her up for three days. Then they told her she was being rejected for no passport...in an envelope that included her passport. This detail is how you know this story is 100% true.
“We figured she could find it on the way to the airport,” Mexico explains. “Hey, at least the people we put in cages are adults.”
“Was it three days?” Andrew is confused. “Huh. Time flies, I guess!”
Amira is beginning to piece together the depth of Andrew’s selfishness, and she says that she wishes Andrew would have looked for her while she was detained.
“I did!” Andrew insists, flipping through the room service menu. “I even called America and was all, dude you’ve got to help us. But you know Trump’s a busy man, and he can’t hear us over the wall, let alone speak Mexico.”
No one feels more keenly aware of Andrew’s shortcomings than Amira’s father, who figured out his daughter was in trouble long before Andrew did. Then he lost sleep, looked, and remembered to express concern when she was finally free.
“I think he’s not the right man for you,” dad is okay with playing Captain Obvious if the situation demands it. “However, this television exposure should at least guarantee than Tom from London hits on you, aggressively.”
This leads Amira to further fret that she’s also going to have to repair Andrew’s relationship with her father, which is unlikely, since he used their debut emergency phone call to compliment dad’s shirt choice.
Andrew says that now that he knows Amira’s safe, he can do a little self care and stop suffering over a cheeseburger in the lounge. When Amira calls, he’s the portrait of concern. “It’s very urgent that we get married,” he says, removing the umbrella and bouquet of pineapple from his drink. “But since I’m here, I’m going to do a little four-wheeling and maybe launch myself off a water slide. I’m totally going to demand to get on a plane without a face mask on the way home, after I talk you into meeting me in a Turkish prison.”
Amira is hurt that he’s vacationing without her, and carrying on like nothing even happened, and feels like there’s already no room for her to open up about what happened to her. So she hangs up on him, and for some reason the rest of us are still forced to hear his voice, when we’d be okay with the screen just going black, and maybe the sound of him falling over travel guides.
NEXT TIME: Jovi still doesn’t understand how sex works, Mike doesn’t understand how a K-1 works, Andrew doesn’t understand how other people work, Tarik and Hazel still call polyamory “being bisexual,” Brandon’s parents attempt to bully him into remaining a toddler, and Stephanie admits to Ryan that she’s a cousin fucker.
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